Michael Jackson is dead at 50

Crikey, this thread is a bit different to most I've read about Jackson. Most of them seem to be seeing who can come up with the rudest/crudest jokes.

It must be said though, I was never a fan of his music and, as I'm sure he's not bothered about me, I'm not bothered in the slightest about his death.

Perhaps this is just a British trait though because I was Glastonbury along with 175,000 other music fans when the news broke and it seemed to take about 1.5 nanoseconds for people to start telling jokes and printing crude T-shirts containing such jokes! In fact, I don't remember anyone I spoke to commenting sadly on his demise although one or two of the acts did some cover versions of his old songs.

It must be said, I can't help but think that his kids may ultimately be better of without him on the scene as he's obviously not been the most stable of personalities in recent years.

 

Whether Michael Jackson was a pedophile or not was a major topic of public debate and litigation. We can no more appropriately generically ban discussion of it at his death than you can ban discussion of whether OJ was a murderer, or Nixon deserved to be impeached, or Bill Clinton's cigar habits at their deaths.

 

On a different angle (Michael Jackson will rock forever though, I guess haters just gotta hate), in terms of his financial situation I think most of us were more familiar with the scope of his debts. And while certainly I was aware of some of his important assets, it was interesting today to read that those assets actually total around ~$700M (and I'm sure higher now simply due to his own death). I'd always thought that his ~$500 million debt load already took all said assets into consideration and formed a sort of net worth figure, but not so.

Anyway more on the situation (and his will), here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124632881534571569.html?mod=mktw

 

Carl, please tell me this isn't you:



LEAVE MICHAEL ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Uh, yes, that's me.

 

Fair enough, but wouldn't most of those end up in RPSC?

 

Looking a pitcure of micheal to day in the news,
One thing Ive always wondered, I can understand the nose (though he shoulda stopped after the first operation)
is why he got a cleft chin? (ok mentally he wasnt 100% but still)
Its a genetic defect, normally something that ppl try to remove instead of adding
I wonder if the doctors had to talk him out of getting a hunchedback

Just one of the traits that made micheal the interesting guy he was

 

So, just one EVH solo cut'n'pasted together into Beat It did it?

There was an army of brilliant session musicians and arrangers that had more to do with what Thriller turned out to be. People like David Paich, Steve & Jeff Porcaro, Steve Lukather, Greg Phillinganes, Paulinho da Costa (interestingly, all of these have been in or played with Toto) and obviously Quincy Jones as the producer.

I don't have Thriller or any other MJ album and I'm not exactly a fan, but that album is really quite brilliant work.

 

You could argue that riff helped launch the album's first single, and might've helped get the video onto MTV. But I did think EVH did more work on the album than just that.

 

The riff in Beat It is from Lukather. All EVH did was the solo.

 

Your knowledge of MJ music is impressive. I stand corrected.

MJ's camp still screwed people like EVH whenever they could. Man-child imagery for the public with ruthless, cut-throat business tactics behind the scenes.

 

EVH himself disagrees with you on this matter in a recent interview on a Dutch newssite (he's Dutch himself). When he was asked for it, he decided himself he wasn't going to ask any money for it. While some people around him considered him crazy at that time, he considered it an honor to be asked as well as good publicity. He doesn't regret it either.

 

He changed his story then, I remember him grumbling about being treated like a standard studio musician back in the 80s.

 

Well, in this case he was a studio musician and that's it. But I have never heard of him complaining about it himself, and I find it totally implausible anyway that Quincy Jones would have told him to play for free or forget about it.

It's not like he could have got royalties or any insane one-time rewards anyway. That's not how the session musician 'business' works, or worked - the players were not there for (big) money. If you are interested in Lukather's rant of music business suckage, session musicianship and how the old times were better:
http://www.stevelukather.net/Article.aspx?id=26